Tuesday, October 6

She sprung out of bed like a rocket, gleefully declaring, "It's picture day!" I don't know exactly why it's so fun to have your picture taken by a stranger, but it is. While I have to resort to trickery and shenanigans to get the kid to make eye contact with a camera, have her stand on the white background at Picture People and she will cheese like a professional model.

As Alexis rushed around to get ready, I wondered if she realized that picture day was at school. When there are dozens of children in need of portraits, it's a lot more like an assembly line and a lot less like the You Are a Super Star! treatment she gets when I take her for pictures. When she asked if she could wear her purple polka-dotted dress, I realized she did know that it was school picture day. That is the dress she wore for pictures in the spring.

As I told her that no, she couldn't wear that dress that she outgrew six months ago, I marveled at how she remembered that detail. I can't remember what I was trying to do five minutes ago. Six months is pretty lost on me. Given that I frequently depend on the kid to remember where I parked at the mall, though, I wasn't entirely surprised.

Then she asked if she could wear her red dress. I pulled out the one we had recently picked out at the store together. "Not that red dress," she told me.

I was confuzzled.

She explained further and I realized she meant the red corduroy dress with matching ballet flats that she hasn't worn in A YEAR. In fact, the last time she wore it was for picture day last fall.

While I told her that dress was also too small, she asked for yet another one. This time it was the pink striped one that she wore for school pictures two springs ago.

Then she did it again. By the time she was done listing potential school picture dresses, she was all the way back to fall 2007. She was ONE YEAR OLD at the time.

My brain exploded at the realization that her Super Power is remembering exactly what she wore for what event. It's not the most useful skill in the world, but if I can manage to harness it just right, it could be fabulous.

15 comments:

Amazing how amazing their memory is, isn't it? Wow. That sentence is wacked! But I hope you know what I mean. These kids of ours... are amazing. I can't even remember what I ate for breakfast, and, well you get the picture. Cute picture of your girl, too, by the way! :)

It's funny - They say kids can't remember things that happened at a certain age, but my son talks about things from when he was two. He also talks about the dog we had put to sleep 4 months before he turned two and how much he misses her.

Girly girls always associate clothes with occasions. Juliana has school pictures today, first she wanted to wear her birthday dress from last October, then her Christmas dress from last year, then the dress she wore for her pictures with the boys...eventually I talked her into the pink and black adorable dress we had picked out.

I hate school pictures, hated the ones of me growing up and Juliana will be sure to bring out her cheesiest eyes closest grin for the professionals while Mommy isn't around.

She's amazing! I was going to write a similar post about my kid's memory, but it certainly doesn't pertain to clothing. Hmmm...you might have a future fashion designer on your hands. Guessing by my kid's interests, I have a future chef.

Aren't you just a wee tiny bit afraid of what could come out in potential therapy sessions? I remember clearly the day I realized that Gracie was old enough to remember how I was acting. I've cleaned up my act considerably since then. ;)